Slashdot Mirror
Viacom and DirecTV Reach New Agreement
An anonymous reader writes "About 10 days after Viacom pulled 26 channels from DirecTV over a contract dispute, the two companies have finally come to an agreement that should have DirecTV fans in need of their MTV rejoicing. While precise details of the newly agreed upon contract weren't made public, Bloomberg is reporting that the new contract is for 7 years with Viacom set to receive more than $600 million a year from DirecTV. That represents a 20% payment increase from the previous contract and is slightly below the 30% increase, or $1 billion, Viacom was initially pushing for."
The disturbing part of this dispute, to me, was how Viacom pulled its shows from the internet in addition to DirecTV. Advertising your side of the story is one thing, but going out of your way to directly frustrate viewers who are interested in your shows seems like bad business.
And the public library is still free.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
No, because this is only Viacom. All programmers continually pull this shit. The only solution is to start paring the number of channels. The programmers anticipate this and keep large groups of channels together in all-or-nothing packages. The same things people bitch about the cable or satellite companies doing are the same things the programmers do to the providers. Providers need to start holding their ground on these things and be willing to permanently give up certain channels if necessary.
That's part of the reason Cable/Satellite doesn't offer "build-your-own" packages where you can choose the channels you want....
The PBS IQ/PBS Kids is a great kids channel. It is one of the digital OTA channels from PBS.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.